Q, is for Quarantine
by bewarethemelodrama
Summary: An extension of Q from 'Alphabet Challenge'. Rated M for future chapters I guess. I don't own anything except the writing.
1. Chapter 1

I got such awesome feedback for this in my Alphabet Challenge, and have been watching Survivors on the BBC recently, so decided to give this extension a go. Let me know what you think. The first chapter is the original, everything after that is extension.

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Q, is for **Quarantine**

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**Chapter One**

Max blinked as the sunlight assaulted her eyes. She pushed the heavy steel shutter all the way back against the wall, and looked out of the third floor window. The grounds of the old, eighteenth-century manor were undisturbed, the countryside around them quiet. The heavy chains and padlocks were still in place on the imposing, wrought iron gate, set in twenty foot, red-brick walls. She scanned the gardens beneath her, searching for the slightest movement, the faintest trace that anyone had made it over the walls in the night. She saw nothing.

She left her bedroom and crossed the hall into the large bathroom. She lifted the steel cross-bar from the shutters and pulled them open. Sunlight streamed into the room and she repeated her scans of the gardens. Seeing nothing amiss she left the bathroom and continued throughout the house, purposefully missing out the bedroom at the end of the hall. In each room she repeated the same process. She opened the shutters, scanned the grounds and listened for any noises from the gardens. At the front door she grabbed the shotgun hanging off the hat-stand and slung it over her shoulder.

She opened the door carefully and listened again. Hearing nothing but the occasional bird's tweet, she strode down the gravel drive to the gate and checked the padlocks were still secure. Finally satisfied everything was safe, she headed back into the house. She entered the kitchen and laid the shotgun on the counter. She looked down on it sadly. It was Mole's gun. A parting gift from the transhuman when he had realised what was happening. What he was about to turn into. Max's abhorrence of guns had lasted less than a week. After that, she had learned what a necessary evil they could be. If Mole were around he'd be proud of her trigger finger. That is, if Mole was even alive. It had been ten years since she'd left Seattle.

She hadn't seen another living soul, other than the one slumbering upstairs and the livestock in the manor grounds, since she had barricaded them in over six years ago. Self-imposed quarantine, isolation, whatever. She could cope with the loneliness as long as they were safe.

She scrapped together a breakfast of scrambled eggs and dished it out onto two plates. She put them on a tray with two glasses of milk and some cutlery, then carried the lot up the stairs. She paused at the closed bedroom door to balance the tray on her hip as she knocked. She pushed it open without waiting for a response and headed toward the bed in the darkened room.

"Alec? You hungry?" a tousled blonde head peered from under the covers.

"Eggs?" he asked, voice husky with sleep. Max nodded and he sat up. "I can be hungry for eggs."

"I figured," she smiled and placed the tray on his legs. She crossed to the vacant side of the bed and hopped up beside him, grabbing her own plate and cutlery. He started to demolish his eggs.

"I'm thinking of doing a supply run in the next couple of days," Max began, "I think there's an old factory about a five hour drive from here that used to make solar panels. It would make things a heck of a lot easier for us. Cut down on searches for generator fuel for a start." She glanced at his already empty plate and stifled a laugh. "You think you'll be alright by yourself for a day?"

"I'm always alright," she started at the phrase. Looking down on him, at that oh-so-familiar way he scratched the back of his neck, before stretching out his arms and yawning, Max felt her eyes fill with tears. He looked over at her and his expressive brown eyes lit up with concern.

"Mom? Are you okay?"

For an instant, Max felt suddenly and overwhelmingly lonely. Lonely and nostalgic. She missed her old life, her friends. She missed Alec, the other Alec that the nine year old beside her was named for, so much that it ached. For the, perhaps millionth time, she listed expletives in her head at the familiars for doing this to her. For doing it to everyone. For unleashing the damn pathogen that had turned everyone into mindless, psychopathic monsters.

The last news bulletin she had caught before fleeing Seattle, had said that the pathogen mutated DNA. Specifically, it targeted junk DNA. In mutating the junk DNA, it mutated the person into something else. Something horrible, and something vicious. She had seen her friends transformed to monsters before her very eyes. Watched as Mole shot a snarling Dalton, just after Dalton had ripped out Sketchy's throat with his teeth. Her best guess was that she was immune, only because she had no junk DNA. She had no idea if she had passed that particular genetic quirk onto her son, but she had no urges to find out. There was no way in hell she was going to risk finding out if her son was immune or not, because there was no way she would ever expose him to any of the infected possibly lurking outside the manor's gates.

When she thought about those last days in Seattle, about Alec's terrified goodbye and his fierce kiss before he threw her in the back of Josh's van. When she thought about it all, she realised that Alec probably sensed she was pregnant before she did. He had been different with her since they slept together. At the time she thought he was just being weird, but now… he'd been so damn **gentle** with her. Had been acting so tenderly toward her those couple of weeks. He'd always been so keen to take on any and all of her duties. Not to mention that he was so fiercely protective of her that he had literally dragged her, kicking and screaming, out of T.C. and into the waiting van. Thinking about him always filled Max with shame and terror. Shame that she had ever allowed herself to leave without him, terror over what might have happened to him.

So she tried not to think about it. The only positive she could discern from the entire damned situation, was that at least the familiars had destroyed themselves as well. So much for their years of selective breeding, or the snake venom acting as a vaccine.

She blinked, trying to clear the tears and fog of emotion, which had descended so suddenly.

"I'm fine kiddo."

She knew that he was out there somewhere, whether he was dead, alive, mutated like the others or immune like her and his son. She knew Alec was out there. And she would find him. Eventually she would find him, and be able to tell her son what had happened to his father.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

Max nudged the heavy door open carefully with the tip of the shotgun barrel. The huge building smelt empty and disused. Like stale air. She couldn't hear anything, but still she was cautious. She was tired, she was worried about leaving her son alone for so long, and she was in no mood for surprises.

There was a very faint, coppery tang in the air of the factory, but she ignored it. She knew what it was. Everywhere had that smell now. The places that animals couldn't get into usually had some pieces left to go with it.

She padded silently through the building, eyes and ears sharp for anything out of the ordinary. It was a standard looking industrial plant; lots of metal beams, exposed brickwork and cheap linoleum. In a spacious office that had a viewing window into the main production chamber, she found an old Winchester rifle mounted behind the desk. The boss's old hunting trophy by the look of it. She ripped it off the wooden mount and clipped it onto her belt. She didn't bother to check if it was functional, she knew she would do it with A.J. later. In the library at the manor she had a cabinet full of weapons and ammunition. She had accumulated them on her various scavenging expeditions, and even though she'd never had to use any but the shotgun in her hand, knowing they were there made her feel safer. It made her feel more secure whenever she had to leave A.J. alone.

She worked quickly, moving from room to room stealthily. In what looked like the former staff cafeteria she found a few un-opened cans of soup, a crinkled bag of potato chips and a bag of sugar. She grinned when she realized the sugar was ant-free and stuffed them all in her rucksack. There was a door marked 'Med-bay' up the hall, which turned out to be a bare room with a chair, some cabinets, a sink thick with dust and a small gurney. She raided the cabinets. There wasn't much left worth taking, but she knew the benefits of preparation, so took what was there.

She followed the corridor around a bend, and spotted a door with a window. A small plaque on the wall beside it read simply, 'Lockers'. She winced when she entered it. The smell of copper was strongest there, and she could see stains on the linoleum where someone had tried to scrub away the reds and browns with industrial cleaner. She forced herself to look away, and cased the room quicker than the others. She tried not to look at the pictures inside the lockers. The family portraits of beaming parents with newborn babies, and young men with their eternally smiling girlfriends were a little more than she could deal with. She took four pairs of boots in varying sizes and six sets of overalls. She stuffed them in her rucksack and opened the last locker.

Sat, quite innocently, there was a baseball. She wanted to reach out and take it. She knew she could give it to A.J. as a gift. But she didn't. She just stared at it, and every second she did made her chest ache. To her, it wasn't a baseball, it wasn't a gift. It was a reminder. It was Alec. Not Alec Junior, her A.J., but Alec. It filled her with terror.

Max had nights where she would let herself, in the dark seclusion of her room, pretend that Alec was there with her. She would get into the big, empty bed, close her eyes and picture his face. She would try to remember his smell, and the feeling of his lips on her forehead. She would imagine him for hours, until she finally fell asleep. Sometimes she would dream of him then, if she had let her imagination get the better of her. Sometimes he wouldn't appear, even in her dreams, and she woke up feeling worse, feeling emptier than she had when she closed her eyes.

She knew she shouldn't let herself feel so empty, that she had no proof that Alec was dead, but it didn't matter. A dark part of her soul called out that he was lost to her either way, and that made her feel... empty. There was no other word for it. Or maybe she couldn't bear to think of one. She shut the locker quickly and left the room. She left the baseball.

Once she was satisfied that there was no one lurking in the building, Max started to sort through all the parts and part-manufactured solar cells in the different areas of the plant. She had found several schematics and manuals, and scanned through them to help herself figure out what to take and what was junk. She pulled out the six modules that she thought looked the most complete and stacked them by the main exit. She stacked spare silicon films, casing and wiring on top of them. She put all the paperwork in a briefcase she had found in the office with the rifle and put that by the pile. She did a last comb-over of the building, picking out some more spare parts and as many tools as she could find in good condition. She filled a wooden crate and two tin buckets with wrenches, hammers, screwdrivers, soldering irons, industrial gloves and every other useful utensil she could spot.

Max made her way out of the factory to where she had left her van. She never made a habit of leaving it outside the building she was in, just in case. A part of her knew it was an invitation if anyone was left in the area, and she wanted to be the one in control of that potential situation.

She pulled the van up to the door and loaded everything into it. She pulled out four 60 litre tubs and some tubing and drained all the gas from four of the five vehicles in the parking lot. She made sure that the van's back door was shut securely, and threw her rucksack and the Winchester onto the passenger seat. She kept her shotgun over her shoulder as she grabbed a piece of paper off a stack in the glove compartment.

The sun was starting to set as she nailed the paper to the factory door. She secured it with ritualistic care, and covered it with tape over the top to protect it in case of rain. She laid a hand over the sign, for what felt like a thousandth time. She took a moment to read over it, though she knew the words by heart, before she got back in her van and headed home.

IF YOU ARE READING THIS, I GUESS THAT MEANS YOU'RE NOT MUTATED, OR INFECTED, OR WHATEVER.

NEITHER AM I.

I HAVE FOOD, CLEAN WATER, CLOTHES, SHELTER AND MEDICINE.

IF YOU CAN READ THIS, CONTACT ME.

THERE IS A CB RADIO AT THE POST OFFICE OUTSIDE LOVELOCK, NEVADA. FOLLOW ROUTE 95 NORTH AND YOU'LL GET THERE.

CALL ME ON CHANNEL 6. I'LL FIND YOU.

MY NAME IS MAX.

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**AN**: So it's started. Can't make any guarantees about update frequency, as I'm really busy with job stuff at the minute, but I'll try. Submit a review and tell me what you thought :)


	3. Chapter 3

It's kinda rare that I do this, but I'm going to try and give you guys some real exposition for once. Since A.J. is a creature we don't yet know or love, and this place they're in is the closest Max will ever get to a family home, I felt they deserved a little attention.

This is the hardest type of writing for me, other than poetry. Creating a bond from nothing. Arfg. So be nice. Please?

Yeah. Enjoy. Dark Angel style Mommy moments ahead.

**Chapter Three**

Max only stopped once on her way back, to top us the gas in the van, and it was dark when she pulled up to the gates of her home. She flashed the lights twice, and pulled out a handheld CB from the glovebox.

"I'm back, kiddo," it was a short message, but it was all they needed. She got out the van and as she unlocked the padlock at the bottom of the gate she saw a lamp bobbing down toward her. A.J dealt with the remaining locks with the large bundle of keys attached to his belt. She put her arms through the bars to help him lift the heavy cross-bar down, then he pushed the gates out. Max had refitted them years ago so they opened outwards instead of in. Showed A.J how it was harder to break open a door that opened toward you. He'd never even thought about it until then.

She drove the van through and then helped him to re-secure the gates. He hopped in and she pulled them up by the front door. They left all the solar items for the morning, and just grabbed the clothes, medical supplies, and food. As an afterthought, Max grabbed the Winchester rifle and Mole's shotgun. She hung the latter on the hat stand by the front door, and put the other on the desk in the library.

In the kitchen, A.J was already rifling through the food she'd found. He looked un-impressed at the tins of soup, but broke out in a broad grin when he saw the sugar. They'd run out of their last batch almost eight months ago and the boy had a sweet tooth worse than his father's.

"Please tell me you did something useful with your day, boy." She quipped, ruffling his hair as she went to grab a mug off the rack behind him. He nodded toward the refrigerator.

"I milked Asha," he replied. Asha was their cow. An affectionate, if fat and lumbering, black and white Holstein. Max had never told him where she got the name from and she never intended to. She was a responsible adult after all.

Most days.

They also had two pigs called Reagan and Ronald.

She opened the fridge and sure enough, there were four bottles of milk in the door. She took out the one with the least in it and poured herself a glass.

"That all?" she asked, seating herself beside him at the kitchen table.

"All the milk or all I did?" he quipped. She smirked, she often did when she thought he was channelling his dad.

"Let's say both." She replied. She crossed her arms and leant back in her chair, one eyebrow arched.

"Then yes, that's all the milk, and no, I fixed the sink too." Max started. She looked over at the kitchen sink, and realized he was right. There was no sound or sign of dripping water for the first time in three months. He did that a lot. Surprised her with new skills that she didn't know he had. Max ignored the voice in her head that said it was just Manticore breeding and smiled at him.

"What would I do without you?" she asked affectionately.

"Live in a crappy house?" he suggested instantly. She flicked the back of his head.

"Don't curse."

"Live in a shack." He corrected. Max narrowed her eyes at him, but her son didn't even flinch at the glare that had once sent grown men running for the nearest exit. On the contrary, he grinned, and looked so damn proud of his own quick wit that Max couldn't help but grin too.

"Dork," she muttered.

"That may be," said A.J. sagely, "but you're my mom, so you've gotta love me any way." Max made a non-committal noise and moved over to the coffee pot. She sniffed the contents warily, added a couple of spoonfuls of instant granules and put it on to boil. She never thought she'd see the day when she'd be excited about instant coffee. But she hadn't found any of the real stuff for a very long time.

"Did you get what you were looking for?" asked A.J., his mouth full of potato chips. Max raised an eyebrow at him and he held the bag out to her sheepishly. She grabbed a handful before replying.

"I think so. But it looks pretty complicated. Got all the manuals too, so thought you might want to try and give me a hand with it in the morning?"

"Is it just solar panels for the roof?"

"Pretty much."

"So… I'll get to go on the roof?" Max hid her surprise. Sometimes she forgot he was just a kid, and that stuff like climbing on the roof of the house was still exciting to him. But then, maybe the high place was a genetic quirk.

"Maybe," she said evasively, "got to figure out how to put them together first."

"That'll be easy." It wasn't just childish bragging. He meant it. It was a statement, simple and true, that between the two of them, with their scientifically crafted intelligence and strength, building things was never a chore. And he was only getting smarter by the day. If Max was totally honest with herself, even though she was proud, some days she also found it a little bit creepy. It reminded her too much of herself, maybe. The ease and proficiency she had with anything technical as a child, that sometimes drew more attention than she intended.

But those were thoughts she had long ago filed away under 'unimportant'. Or more accurately, 'the dark place that is better forgotten about'. And so she did it again now.

"Well, how about we get the 'easy' part out of the way in the morning then?" she asked.

"Okay."

"Good. Decision, decided upon!" she said this with as deep a rumble as she could manage, like the ring announcers she had seen at boxing matches once upon a time. Something that she would never let her son near if he had been born into the world as it was. Not how it had become.

But then, if her son had been born into the world that was, she would never have had to keep him locked away, like some cheeky male Rapunzel. Looking at him, actually, his hair was getting pretty long. The sandy locks had reached his chin, and had a wave to them that looked like her natural curl fighting against his father's straight, thick mop. She smirked a little to herself at the image of Alec's face if he had ever heard his hair being called a 'mop'. She had been reading way too many old books in the last few years.

"You'll be up all night if you drink that." Said A.J., indicating the brewing coffee. Max raised an eyebrow at him.

"I'm the adult." She stated. "I'm allowed." She purposefully poured herself a mug of coffee, even though it wasn't quite hot enough yet, and took a long swig. "But thanks for reminding me how late it is." A.J. almost visibly deflated at that statement. He knew where it was going. Max put her mug back down. "Rather than eating us out of house and home, you should be heading to bed, kiddo."

"But I'm not even a little sleepy." He complained.

"Irrelevant." She laughed. "I am bigger than you, therefore I win."

"You won't always be." He lifted his chin defiantly.

"Well you can argue with me about it then." She skipped over and in one quick motion, picked him up, turned him around and set him on his feet facing the door. "Until then, bed."

"That's a very long time to be in bed for."

"Shut up, smart-aleck, and get moving." She gave his rump a quick tap, and A.J. walked away, grumbling quietly under his breath about mothers and stupid rules and how much it sucked to be little. Max smiled quietly, took another sip of her too cold coffee, then set about securing their home for the night.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

Blood, matted in sandy hair. Clumps of blond, stained red. It was running down his cheek, dripping off his chin. She wanted so badly to touch it. To hold his face to hers, to give and take the blood he needed. But she couldn't reach him. Every time she held a hand towards him the haze between them thickened, deepened, obscured him a little more. His mouth opened, showing his perfect teeth stained black with blood. The whisper shoved its way through the haze over to her. It was the closest she could get. It wrapped around her, caressed her.

"_Max."_

Max opened her eyes with a start. Her face was damp and she rubbed it with the heel of her palm. She looked around the empty bedroom. That familiar grief, residue from the dream, residue from life, scrabbled for purchase again. She forced it back. Forced herself up and out of bed. She pulled a hoody over her head and padded from the room, using the morning routine to scrub away the clinging traces of emotion that haunted her every morning.

She was surprised to find A.J. already up. It couldn't have been much past 6am. He was sat in the library, reading one of the solar panel manuals. He was cross-legged on the floor, the other manuals scattered around him. Apparently she had underestimated how much he wanted to go on the roof.

"I didn't know you were such a fan of green energy." She stated, leaning against the doorframe and crossing her arms.

"Couldn't sleep," he replied. "Thought that I'd get a head start." Max scowled at him.

"Have you been up all night?" she asked.

"No," he said, refusing to look her in the eye. "Just had some nightmares, is all. About the big guy." Nightmares. Max could certainly relate to that. She crossed over to her son and sat beside him, she wrapped her arms around him and kissed his forehead.

"You can call him Joshua, you know." She said quietly.

"I know. It just… doesn't feel right." He replied, equally as quiet. "Like I didn't know him long enough." She squeezed him, knowingly. That confusion. Partial memories of things, people, you know were important. As with so many things, she could relate.

"You knew him long enough to remember him, A.J.," she told him softly. "Even if it's only in dreams. That counts for something."

"I guess." He agreed quietly, flicking a page in the manual. Max poked the manual, rustling the pages.

"Besides, this right here," she flattened her palm against the page, crinkling it. "and the fact that you actually want to read it, means you're an excellent, if weird, kid sometimes."

"Well I've not got many points of reference really." He said it so casually that Max felt her heart break a little for him. She tried to push it away, not to notice their isolation so keenly, but the levity in her voice was forced.

"Who needs reference points anyway? You," she paused and glanced at him with a smirk he couldn't read, "are a unique creature, unlike any other." He pulled a face at her.

"That is possibly the worst thing I've ever heard come out of your mouth." He stated. "And I've heard you sleep talk about that Normal guy." She laughed and held up her hands as she stood.

"Hey, don't blame me, I didn't make up the phrase!" He shook his head at her.

"Really, mom?" he said. "I expected better from you."

"Whatever, you loser." She said, giving him a gentle shove. She went to leave the room, and stopped in the doorway. "You eaten yet?" she asked over her shoulder.

"Nope." She nodded.

"I'll make breakfast in ten." His nose was buried in the manual again, and he gave her a half-hearted wave of acknowledgment. She snorted, and walked into the hall. She grabbed the shotgun, unbolted the door carefully, and poked her head out. The usual lack of sound greeted her, and she stepped out into the sharp mountain air. She considered going back for shoes, but decided against it. She picked her way down the gravel drive, and checked the gate. The padlocks were as they had left them.

It was a bright morning, and Max took a moment to drink in the silence. Though she still missed the sounds of the city, the quiet calm of their stronghold held a significance that meant much more to her.

Safety.

As if he had heard her thoughts, she heard A.J. calling out to her from inside the house. She turned and started carefully making her way up the drive to the open front door. She heard him call again.

"Mom?"

Max frowned. Something didn't feel right.

"Mom!" He shouted. His voice was urgent, and Max felt a brief moment of helpless panic as she looked at the door she had left standing open. Brief, because she did as all the best mothers do and pushed it away to sprint to her son.

She was there in seconds. He was still sitting in the library, but his entire body was tensed and he was wearing a look of intense concentration. He glanced at her as she materialised, and held up a hand to stop her in her tracks. His head was cocked to the side, like he was listening for something. She froze, every muscled tensed, ready for action. Then she heard it too. A voice, muffled, and further distorted by a strange sort of crackle. Her head whipped towards the window, and she realised two things. Firstly, her heart was racing. Second, the voice was coming from inside the room.

But… there was more distortion than voice.

Without even realising that she did it, Max blurred to the table under the window and sent the piles of books scattering to the ground. She crouched before it, panting, and laid her forehead against the wood to calm herself.

"You're bleeding."

"What?" Max flinched at her son's voice. She'd almost forgotten he was there. She looked down at herself, but couldn't see anything.

"Your feet." He said, pointing down at them. She stood and lifted one, and saw a few small scratches. She had tracked blood across the floor behind her too, and realised she must have cut them open when she sprinted on the gravel. She forced herself to pull a chair up to the table and take her weight off the split skin. They'd heal.

A.J. was still sitting, his body rigid with tension. She waved him over as she pushed the last stack of books away, and their CB radio was clearly visible. He came and stood beside her uncertainly as she began to turn dials with practised, tiny movements.

The crackle on the radio grew louder, and Max wasn't sure, but thought she could distinguish a male voice. The sound was harsh, and desperate. Unintelligible. And it filled her with equal parts fear and hope. She tried to tune into the channel so it was clearer, and she realised that the speaker had lowered his voice. She knew instinctively that he was hiding from something. She looked at A.J., suddenly uncomfortable that he was listening.

She reached for the hand-held, then hesitated. What if her response brought attention to their caller? This unknown boy or man. But then, he wouldn't risk transmitting if he wasn't desperate. If he'd survived this long, he must know the risks. She grabbed it and held it to her mouth. After another harsh whisper that sounded like 'help', she pressed the button.

"This is Max. I'm here." She released the button and waited. And waited. The radio crackled quietly. After a beat she let out the breath she realised she had been holding and glanced at A.J., who was stock still beside her. His face was white, jaw taut with tension. They both jumped when the radio crackled back into life.

"Hello?" More static. "… real? The posters were real?" Max was quick to respond.

"They are. What's your situation?"

"… pinned down … long left before they …" The noise that followed sounded like something smashing, and the start of a scream before the talk button was released on his end. The soft static of the radio returned, and Max saw that A.J.'s eyes had gone wide.

"You still there?" She said. She didn't believe in anything, but Max was praying for a response now. "Talk to me." Her voice sounded more urgent than she'd have liked, with A.J. to bear witness.

Silence.

She'd been wrong. So wrong. He was so desperate that he didn't care about the risks.

She let her forehead rest against the desk again. The first contact they'd had, in all those years. Proof that someone was still out there. And her posters had maybe led him to his death. She didn't even know this kid, and a part of her wanted to weep for him.

"Mom?" she turned her head without raising it, so she felt the grain of the wooden desk against her cheek. A.J.'s voice had wavered, and he was trembling. She sat up quickly and drew him into a tight embrace.

"It's okay, kiddo." She murmured against his hair. "It's okay." She held him like that until his shaking subsided. It was a position she was familiar with, but normally the shakes wracking his small frame were biological, not this. Not fear and grief and confusion and horror. He shouldn't know any of those things. But then, neither of them should. And neither should the person attached to that, now absent, disembodied voice. Max pushed down the violent hate that rose in her for the world she lived in. The impotent rage. More than anything, she had the desire to do something. To change it, somehow.

But what could one person do?

She looked at her son. At the creature she had somehow created from nothing who had flourished in their broken Eden. He was a miracle, a beacon of hope when everything around her had crumbled or fled. She knew, without doubt or hesitation, that he was the only reason she was still alive.

If it wasn't for A.J., she would never have created this safe world she had survived in for almost a decade. She would never have hidden away from the danger. She would have stood, proud, stubborn and strong, with her friends until she'd been brought down herself.

If it wasn't for A.J., Alec would never have sent her away in the first place.

But there were too many assumptions for Max to be comfortable with in those thoughts.

She assumed that Alec wouldn't have tried to save her anyway. She assumed that her friends would have let her die with them. She assumed that they hadn't survived. She wanted to slap herself for that thought. Damage whatever part of her had let this bleak belief grasp hold so tightly.

How dare she believe the worst like that. How dare she have so little hope.

This voice, this moment today, was proof that if anything, there was hope. There was a chance, however small, that someone had survived.

Seattle might not even be the burnt out shell she had dreamt about.

That gave her pause. The tiny pilot light that she thought had long ago burned out, just a flicker, had returned. The longer that she sat there, cradling her son, contemplating the past, the present, the potential future, the stronger it began to burn. Soon, she was ablaze with hope. So much that she didn't dare breathe for fear it would all escape in one great fireball.

She knew what she had to do.

"I'm going back," she paused as her son pulled back and looked directly at her.

"Back where? To Seattle?"

"Yeah, or a part of it at least," she didn't call it Terminal City, because she knew that all of Seattle could probably be given that moniker now.

"Where you and dad used to live?"

"Yeah," she cast her eyes to the ground, and fought the tears that threatened to rise in them, "and I need you to stay here."

"Oh," she looked up at A.J, and could see the disappointment flash in his eyes. He caught her gaze, and held it, and the disappointment changed to something else. Something way too similar to the father he had never met. "Well that's not happening, obviously."

"Not a discussion, A.J.," she chastised.

"I agree," he nodded, "my life too, mom. My family. I'll never forget it if you leave me behind for this." Max smiled and couldn't help but shrug. Fighting it would be a lost cause. This she knew. Say no and he'd just follow her anyhow. And if she was honest, she didn't want to leave him on his own. He was all she knew now. Her only companionship for way too many years. The idea of leaving him sickened her.

"Fine. But we've got to stop in Lovelock first. Check out if anyone is still near that radio."

"Definitely going to be creepy, but okay with me."

"Atta boy." She drew him into a tight hug, resting her chin on the sandy hair that was her whole world.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

They sealed up the house, and secured the gates before they left. A.J made sure to prop open all the gates to the animal pens so they could roam the grounds for food in their absence. Max couldn't find it in herself to be concerned about the animals. She had too many other things to be concerned about.

She knew, if push came to shove, they could easily survive on the provisions she had packed in the van for a month or so, but she really hoped that they would be back before that. Whether that was with the answers they were heading out to find was another matter, and she wouldn't think about them not coming back at all.

A.J sat beside her in the front of the van, rifling through a box of CDs and cassette tapes. She'd always found it funny, how those little rectangles of plastic had survived the Pulse when so many other types of media had fried. She'd always thought that one day the technology that enabled her to listen to music would have evolved. She remembered iPods and MP3 players before the Pulse, but the digital media contained on them, and the ability to afford such luxuries, had all but evaporated with the bomb detonation. One more thing lost to their broken down world.

He picked a mix tape of classic sounding rock songs. Some of them had been 20 years old when she was born back in 2000, which meant they were over 50 years old now. She didn't know the names of any of the bands, as the tape was clearly home-made by someone many years before. She had found it, along with a small selection of others, in a rusted out Impala on the 95 heading out of Oregon.

She wondered, as she often did with many things now, if there was anyone out there still writing music. Or if the skills involved in playing instruments and crafting melodies were another thing lost forever. How strange it was, that the music she found on tapes and CDs, abandoned relics of forgotten lives, could be all the music left in the world. That in the last decade, no new songs had been created.

She shook off the melancholy that threatened to settle over her, and started up the van. Before she pulled away, she took a quick moment to say farewell to their home. She was even more reluctant than she thought she would be when she finally pulled away, and had to force herself to tear her eyes away from the rearview mirror.

She and A.J. didn't talk for the first half of the journey. He spent most of his time staring out of the window, though there wasn't much to look at. Mostly mountains and trees. The occasional abandoned cabin. But then, Max realised, for someone who had never been outside the grounds of their home, it was probably much more fascinating than she thought it was.

She had spent the last nine years worrying about him. All the time. And now that they were out there, in the world, she was terrified. She worried about him being left alone in this new world. She worried about him having to survive on his own when the inevitable happened and she was gone. She worried about what would happen if they did meet someone, a real someone, of the speaking, thinking variety. Of what he would do then, after a life with only her for company. If he knew enough about the world to deal with that, and if the other person would remember enough to know how to deal with it themselves.

A.J. started to sing along to the music, and Max grinned, pleased by the distraction from her thoughts. They were less than an hour away from Lovelock, and she focussed the rest of the journey on singing loudly, often wrongly, with her son.

The Post Office was three blocks into the eastern edges of the small city, so they approached from that end. Though Max knew there was a Safeway and a couple of gas stations further into the city proper that might still hold some salvageable goods, she had no intention of driving through now she knew there was at least one infected creature somewhere around.

Lovelock's population had been less than 2000 when the Pulse hit, and had dwindled to less than 1200 by the time the virus spread. She had chosen it because the distance from their home wasn't insurmountable, but also because she had been confident that the population was now zero.

If she discounted the idea of drifters, or the boy being followed, she had been wrong. She didn't like being wrong.

She thought that their van was too loud to take into the suburbs of the city, so left it on the interstate behind the remains of what might have once been an oil tanker. Their walk should be short. Ten minutes at the most if they went very slowly, with an emphasis on stealth. She intended to put an emphasis on stealth.

As they climbed out of the van and locked it, Max tried to relax and not let the anxiety lurking beneath rise and overwhelm her. Ideally, she didn't want to bring A.J. into the town with her. But she couldn't leave him alone either. She had two pistols loaded and ready in a hip holster, which made her feel more than a little bit like a cowgirl about to walk into a ghost town. She had Mole's shotgun too, and a couple of other weapons in the van. She slipped a serrated hunting knife into an ankle sheath, and some extra ammo into her jacket pocket. She said a silent plea to not have to use any of them, and grabbed Mole's shotgun from the van's bonnet. She took A.J.'s hand with her free one.

"Remember," she whispered. "silent, unless I tell you otherwise." He nodded agreement, and she kissed the top of his head.

She led him into the town, knuckles white as she gripped his hand. It was a still, warm day. Not even a breeze to rustle the debris that littered the ruined streets. Sunlight glinted from the broken shards of glass that seemed to be everywhere. At the first intersection three cars were still entwined, rusted metal wrapped with rusted metal in what had clearly been a bad accident. The door stood open to the one at the front, the seats inside tattered and mouldy with age and exposure. The driver of the car behind hadn't been so lucky as to just walk away. A body, barely more than bones and desiccated skin, in a pink sundress of all things, was still there slumped over the steering wheel. The glass of the windshield was filthy and spider-webbed with fractures, but somehow still whole. She heard A.J. stifle a gasp.

"Don't look." She whispered, and tugged him onwards.

Movement fluttered in her peripheral vision when they reached the cover of the buildings across the intersection, and Max spun toward it, shotgun raised. She tried to calm her hammering heart as she realised it was just a bird, and resolved to make this a short visit to Lovelock.

They crept, soft and silent as two cats, along the sidewalk to the next intersection. The road here was completely empty, but Max found that worse than the grim mess behind them. No cars meant no cover. They would be completely exposed as they sprinted across the asphalt. She pushed A.J. against the wall and signalled to him to stay there. He nodded, eyes wide. She retraced her steps until she found a decent chunk of broken mirror from one the cars. She wiped it clean with her sleeve. I was fractured in a few places, but usable. She padded silently back to A.J, and inched her way along the wall until she could see three of the four roads leading off the crossroads. All clear.

She held the mirror out cautiously, so she could see a section of the road behind the wall. It looked empty. She inched the mirror out a little further, so more of the road was visible. There was another crashed car, but this one wasn't rusted out like the others. It was battered, and the front was wrapped around a lamppost, but it looked as though it has been used – and crashed – recently. Max wondered what would make someone crash a car, on what looked like a completely empty road. She also wondered where they had come from.

True, she had a working vehicle. But she had spent three years raiding old factories and oil refineries in order to figure out how to treat the degraded fuel she managed to siphon from other vehicles, (and once or twice, abandoned gas stations) to make it usable again. In order for someone else to have a running vehicle, they would have to have figured out a similar system. Or be using an alternate fuel source. Either way, it was some pretty advanced technical knowledge. Not something she would have had if it wasn't for her Manticore background.

Figuring this out did not make her feel better.

She watched for a little longer, but didn't see any movement, so finally turned to A.J. and crouched beside him.

"No cover here. Need you to go fast, okay?" He nodded. "Blur." He nodded again. "Okay. On my signal." She crept to the edge of the wall, and checked her mirror again.

And something moved.

She pulled the mirror in instantly and flattened against the wall. Her heart was racing and she forced herself to breathe slowly and quietly. She hadn't seen whatever it was, because she had recoiled too quickly, but she was convinced it had been bigger than a damn bird this time. It was people sized.

Person.

She listened intently for the sound of anything moving around the corner. No scrapes, steps, or pads on concrete. No breathing, or mumbling, or speaking or groaning. No glass being kicked. Nothing. Again, having this knowledge didn't make her feel better. After another minute of silence, she lifted the mirror and used it to – incredibly cautiously – look around the corner again.

The street was clear.

Whatever, whoever, had been there was gone. There was no evidence visible in Max's mirror that the cause of the mysterious movement was still around. This worried her. If this thing could move around that silently, it could easily get the jump on either of them.

It was time to finish this.

She nodded to A.J., and counted to three on her fingers. On the fourth beat, she pointed across the road, and they both blurred to the cover of the buildings on the other side. Max stopped, back flat against brickwork, and pulled A.J. to her. She could hear her heart hammering in her chest, and A.J.'s slightly increased breathing, but nothing else. She decided not to linger any more than they had to, and ran silently along the sidewalk until she came to the next crossing. The post office was four buildings down on this block.

She did the mirror trick again. The road here was choked with cars, long abandoned and rusted into unusable scrap, but there was no sign of anything moving. She signalled to A.J., and they moved swiftly around the corner and down toward the Post Office.

The smell hit her when she stepped into the doorway and she staggered back a step.

Max had learned early on in life how to distinguish between the smell of fresh and long dead blood. Of course, she had never chosen to walk straight into anywhere that reeked of fresh blood since the change happened. Part of her recoiled at the idea, part of her wanted to take her son and run back to the safe haven she had created for them. But they had come this far already, so she couldn't do it. She needed to know. They needed to know. She dropped the mirror shard to reach over and grab his hand hard. He squeezed it back.

Gun held high with one hand, her son held tightly in the other, Max stepped over the threshold into the Post Office.

The radio was behind the counter, which had glass privacy screens attached to it. The screen in the centre of the desk was smashed. Max peered over the desk, not wanting to see what she knew would be there.

The kid on the radio had been desperate after all. And whatever had caught him had been hungry.

She pushed A.J. behind her and led him to the door that opened into the staff area behind the desk. It was unlocked, and she took a breath to steel herself for what she had just glimpsed. She pushed the door open and tried not to gag as the smell hit her again. His body was sprawled, face up, beneath the desk. The radio was smashed beside him. There was a lot of blood. She looked at A.J., and felt horrible when she saw his grey complexion. She hated that he lived in a world where he saw things like this.

She wasn't squeamish by nature, but what remained of the dead boy's blank, staring eyes was beginning to creep her out. She didn't want to reach down and close them, because it would mean touching him, so she gently eased her boot under his shoulder, and turned him to face the floor. His head flopped unpleasantly on what remained of his neck.

There was a barcode on the back of his neck. Well, it was closer to half a barcode, but it was there. She stumbled back a step, unable to tear her eyes from the mark. She was trying to digest what it meant.

She didn't recognise him, so he wasn't an 09er. Maybe a later escapee from Mole and Joshua and Alec's time. But he was clearly younger than her, so must have been a few grades below. X7? X8? Was there even an X9 grade? She didn't see why there couldn't have been. Bugler was an X8 and had been about A.J.'s age when she had met him. That was twelve years ago. If he was still alive, he would be about 21 now. The kid on the ground looked younger than that. She crouched down beside him, to try and get a closer look at the barcode.

It was a tiny thing that gave it away – the mirror shard that Max had dropped, shuffling slightly on the ground – but Max was up and facing the doorway immediately, gun raised and armed. The thing in the doorway had long, matted hair down to its waist, and the filthy, tattered remnants of a denim shirt, black jeans and green tank top. Blood was crusted over its mouth and Max was sure the stain had come from the boy's body below her. The thing was still, as if it was deciding what to do, then a low, rumbling growl began to emanate from it and it took a step into the building.

"Put your hands over your ears," Max commanded, mother and soldier tones mixing. A.J reacted instantly, and Max fired the gun through the broken glass screen. She flinched, she always flinched, but her aim was true. Blood splattered and the creature, she couldn't think of it as a woman, crumpled to the floor. She looked A.J. over, acknowledged he was unharmed, then grabbed his hand again. "Now, run!"

Speed was a gift Max was grateful to Manticore for. Both in her past and current lives. They were out of Lovelock in less than a third of the time it had taken them to get in. The van doors had barely closed before it was pulling onto the highway, wheels protesting at the sudden acceleration.

Max didn't slow down until they were many miles from Lovelock. A distance that would take anything on foot almost a day to reach. She didn't think that there would be anything following them, but she needed to be sure.

"Mom?" A.J.'s voice was breathless, but not too shaky. She looked him over again, satisfied that he had no visible injuries.

"Yeah, kiddo?" she asked.

"That was actually much creepier than I thought it would be."

Max couldn't help herself. She laughed.

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**A.N.** : Hope you liked this chapter. Please leave me a review and tell me what you thought. I know updates are slow, and I apologise, but I do have this story pretty thoroughly mapped out now so it will get finished eventually.


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